'What are you doing in my house?'

Saturday

RAMSEUR — Michael Thomas and his family were sleeping when they heard an upstairs window in their house shatter around 2:15 a.m. Friday.

Thomas and his wife both went up the stairs, not sure what they were about to encounter.

“I was expecting to maybe see a tree fallen in through the window,” Thomas said. One had fallen onto a building on their property recently, and he assumed the window breaking was the result of another.

When he and his wife got to the top of the stairs, they saw a man standing, frozen, in front of the broken window and just outside of their daughter's bedroom.

The family later learned the man used a stepladder from a shed on their property to get to the second floor window and had used a rock to break the glass.

Thomas said he recognized the intruder.

“I had seen him in my yard before and confronted him,” the homeowner explained. Back in December, the person had been wandering his property, and Thomas asked him to leave and not return.

The intruder didn't verbally threaten the family or make any moves when he saw Thomas and his wife. He also didn't appear to be armed.

“I said, 'What are you doing in my house?' ”

Thomas added that the man seemed to recognize him as well. “He said, 'Hey, you remember me?' ”

Thomas then told the man to walk towards him, grabbed him by the belt when he was near and guided him down the stairs.

“I picked up a pistol when we got downstairs and seated him in a chair,” Thomas said, adding that his wife also took action, making the call to 9-1-1.

He tried to talk to the man while they waited for someone from the Randolph County Sheriff's Office to arrive.

“I asked him what it was he had planned on doing.”

Thomas' attempts to communicate were fairly unsuccessful. The only other comment the intruder made was when he noticed a deer head mounted on a wall in the home:

“That's a big deer.”

The man was arrested when deputies arrived at the Thomas' home on Jones Street Extension.